Unless you're Hungarian and fluent in the language of the homeland — or willing to risk a severely pulled tongue muscle — don't even bother trying to pronounce the name of the place he found himself that fall. It's called Szekesfehervar, which comes in at six challenging syllables with a few rolled Rs for an even higher degree of difficulty.

Don't let the prohibitive name give you the wrong sense of the place, though. The first part means Cathedrals and the second half means White Castle. Which gives you some sense of how pretty the ancient city of 100,000 really is. It really was a good place to be, Justin Edwards says.

Until they brought out the food.

"They put sour cream on everything."

That's not a figure of speech, he insists. They slather it on everything. Pizza. Chicken. Whatever. If it's eaten, it's wearing sour cream.

Still, the Hamilton Honey Badgers' guard says the experience over there in the fall and winter of 2016 was terrific. He couldn't speak the language so he could only communicate through basketball. Yet that was enough. His team won the regular-season title and the championship. He played well enough to earn some individual honours. It was all enough to make him enjoy international basketball enough to consider playing far from home again.

Which is good, considering what's happened since.

After returning home in the spring of 2017, he played briefly for the Toronto Raptors team in the Las Vegas summer league. Then got an offer to play in Italy. He's already mentioned pizza so you know that was going to be just fine. And when he arrived in Capo d'Orlando, he was excited about his future there.

"I tried to learn (some Italian)," he says. "But I was only there two-and-a-half months."

This is where his basketball journey goes a little crazy.

Edwards was playing well. He'd again been honoured for his individual achievements. He figured he'd be there for a while. Until he got a call from his agent one morning telling him his team wanted to sell his contract.

To a team in South Korea.

Seoul is a long way from Whitby, where he grew up and where his family is. It's also a long way from Maine where he started his university career or Kansas State where he finished it after transferring following his sophomore year. So he might've balked or refused to report. Maybe looked for something a little closer.

"(But) I couldn't really say no to the number they were offering," he says.

So he went. And it turns out he liked it there, too.

At this point, it seems appropriate to mention that Edwards isn't a big talker. When discussing his life as a basketball Bedouin, he comes across as a pretty positive guy who wouldn't get bent out of shape about much. His default position seems to be to like nearly anything. The experiences? Good. The food (minus the sour cream)? Good. The people? Good. The basketball? Good.

Which quickly proved helpful again. Because the minute the Korean season was over he signed with a team in France for the playoffs. Which was ... ah, you already know.

When that season was over — if you're having trouble keeping track, don't worry, it's not just you — his agent called with an offer to join a team in northern Israel. At this point, he figured, why not?

"It was really nice there," he says.

Of course it was. But you'll notice he worded that in the past tense. Not long after he arrived last summer there was a management shuffle in the front office. The new folks wanted their own people in place. Players included. Suddenly, 9,000 kilometres from home, he was out of a job.

The thing is, Edwards is a useful player. He can pass, he can score, he can run an offence. And he's willing to go wherever there's a basketball and a court. When a different team in South Korea asked him to return to the country, he went. Which is where he stayed until he was drafted by Hamilton in March.

He's learned something since arriving back in Canada. All this moving around is great. But it's nice for his family to be able to watch him play. Or to watch him online with play-by-play in English.

"It's definitely cool to play at home," he says.

Even so, he'll be heading back on the road when the season ends in August. Everywhere he's been there are teams asking him to come back, he says. He hasn't decided where he'll be going yet but you can bet it'll be far from here.

As for right now, following back-to-back losses to Saskatchewan — including a 98-85 defeat at home on Saturday — Hamilton is 1-2 and clearly have some work to do. Winning is what it's all about, no matter where he is.

Still, in his short Canadian Elite Basketball League career, Edwards has laid claim to a piece of history. Just seconds into last week's season-opener at FirstOntario Centre, he scored the Honey Badgers' first-ever basket on a layup.

No, he wasn't called for travelling.

sradley@thespec.com

905-526-2440 | @radleyatthespec

Spectator columnist Scott Radley hosts The Scott Radley Show weeknights from 6-8 on 900CHML.

Scott Radley | May 20, 2019 | The Hamilton Spectator